Rolling out fresh Pasta

Divide the dough into four balls. Assemble the pasta machine. Dust the work surface with 00 flour. Have a container of semola ready, and lightly dust the storage tray with it.

Flatten the first ball out into a disc 1 cm thick, then open the pasta machine to its widest setting and feed the disc through the rollers. Fold in two lengthways. Narrow the rollers one setting and repeat. Keep doing this until you reach the narrowest setting. By this time the pasta may be unmanageably long – simply cut it. It should be thin enough to read a medium-sized newspaper headline through, over-thick pasta is a disaster! If anything goes wrong during the rolling process simply fold back and repeat. The re-rolling is an extra kneading, and in general the more times it is kneaded the better.